Brief description:

Migration has been reframed as a phenomenon that needs to be governed and prevented. As a result of this approach, the use of informal mechanisms to regulate immigration between transit countries counts with no precedent. Governments prioritise their interests while deliberately seeking to contract themselves out of their legal obligations. The present paper, in this regard, is to interrogate whether these informal agreements, which are the practice of conducting binding agreements deliberately deprived of certain formalities and procedural safeguards, undermine the migrants’ protection provided by the rule-based multilateral system.
The research will centre on externalisation agreements to investigate whether informal agreements corrode the non-refoulement principle. The goal of the research is not to quantify instances of human rights violations but rather to establish, if any, the impacts of informalisation on the prohibition of non-refoulement. Assessing informal agreements in migration governance may offer valuable perspectives on the possible conflation of state responsibility, as informalisation might exacerbate the lack of accountability for human rights violations resulting from migration control.

Methodology:

The paper employs the case study method to illuminate a broader category of situations. Therefore, the research follows the case study approach, examines various contexts and compares externalisation agreements (EU-Turkey, Australia-Indonesia, and U.S.-Mexico) to determine if the trend of informalization might reflect a deeper erosion of the entire international normative order. The paper will adopt the critical legal approach within the structure of legal institutions to indicate that the selection of a particular format is a conscious decision rather than a random occurrence, potentially hindering migrants from contesting or challenging it. The culture of formalism, in this regard, will be espoused from the standpoint of the underprivileged agent seeking recourse through legal means, as the entire international normative order could be jeopardised by contractual amendments to rules derived from multilateral conventions.

Keywords: Informal Agreements, Migration control, non-refoulement, normativity, multilateralism

Home University:

University of Dundee

Faculty:

Law

Supervisor: Sufyan Droubi

Added to catalogue on: 15-04-2025

Additional information: